Benjamin Vryce

Benjamin held his breath. Taking advantage of the calm moments before violence exploded, to look around. There were six large red soldiers arrayed around the monarchs, each armored with thick carapace. Then there were the monarchs themselves, the scarred and battered king and his queen. The red king looked every bit as dangerous as the blue king had, another veteran of endless war.

He had already told the goblins to focus on the big reds around the room. That left the queen, who was big and thickly armored. Where the king looked like he could dish out the pain, the queen looked like she could tank whatever came at her, and keep going.

“Ice, you and I will handle the queen. Blue, you got the king. Everyone else, take on the soldiers. When they are dead…help us as you can.” It was all the time they had; it was like his words were the trigger to the conflict, as they left his mouth, the battle began.

It was chaos; the space was large for a room, a thirty-foot rounded dome, but with all the bodies packed in and moving, it was suddenly very small. The kings acted first; wings beating the air like the blades of a helicopter as they launched themselves at one another. Red monarch vs blue monarch, battle scarred veterans of a thousand plus years of war.

It would have been an exaggeration to say that sparks flew when they clashed, but not by much. Scythe bladed forearms collided, again and again, armor absorbing blows or being rent away. Benjamin wished he could watch the show, it was breathtaking in its violent simplicity.

A booming noise followed by a concussive force to the air let him know that Grace had let loose with a powerfully enhanced arrow. The shot had struck one of the soldier’s center of mass, cracking armor and exoskeleton alike as it punched into the soft, orange, guts of the Hive. The bow was capable of mass outpouring of damage if charged ahead of time, unfortunately a shot like that would deplete the bows core by half.

One enemy down, he lost line of sight as four mastiff sized squirrels and ten ants of varying sizes, along with an axe wielding goblin rushed the remaining five soldiers. He hadn’t called Silver out, he knew that the little spider couldn’t pierce the carapace of the Hive, and so wouldn’t be of help in this battle. His musings ended with the arrival of the queen.

She barreled towards him like the dire boar had, in their death match several weeks ago. He hadn’t been alone for that fight, and thankfully, he wasn’t alone for this one either. As she came at him, Ice met her charge head on. The queen hadn’t been looking at the she wolf, so her scything limbs hadn’t been raised. Otherwise, Benjamin was almost sure that Ice would have been slain, right then and there.

As it was, the queen was able to sink her mandibles into the back of Ice’s neck. The Red’s jaws sank into flesh and blood began seeping into Ice’s shaggy fur. The she wolf was wearing carapace armor of an ice white/blue belted into place with leather straps, but it wasn’t complete coverage. She relied on her speed to fight, so freedom of movement was of paramount importance.

She sank her own jaws into the queen’s body in return, and unlike the Hive, her jaws had been designed to rip flesh. Carapace armor crunched in her massive jaws, but the queen was otherwise uninjured. Benjamin hadn’t been idle during this exchange however; he had circled behind the queen and threw his weight against the knee joint of one of her hind legs.

He was rewarded with the snapping sound of an exoskeleton joint. The searing pain that followed directly after that sound however, was caused when the scythe blade went through his back and exited under his sternum. He screamed weakly, not being able to get a breath around the razor-edged front limb that had punctured his armor and body.

Ice was with him though, her grip on the queen shifted, sinking into the forelimb protruding from his back and crushing the joint. The red spasmed, causing even more damage to Benjamin’s already ruined back, but the limb blade was pulled free.

As he fell to the floor in a puddle of his own blood, he heard the shrieking scream from the goblin girl. She had apparently noticed the danger he was in, because a second overcharged essence enhanced arrow slammed into the queen’s body. Armor plates shattered, and the queen’s outer shell was covered in a web of small cracks, but again she was not overly damaged.

She had been wounded however, one of her legs was no longer functioning, and the scything limb Ice bit into wasn’t moving either. As Benjamin fought for breath, and waited for his ruined body to heal, the queen took to the air. Ice leapt after her, but was almost impaled for her trouble.

Benjamin struggled to stand. He would heal, but he couldn’t afford to let the queen escape. Grace was at his side in seconds, helping him into a semi sitting/kneeling position. It was as far as she could get him with her small frame and his injuries. It was far enough for him to grasp the rest of the battle while he continued to heal, so he took the opportunity to check on his other summons.

The blue king was still clashing with the red monarch in the air. They would come together, raining blows on each other and fly apart again after each exchange. The manner of combat had Benjamin’s blood loss addled mind remembering anime from his childhood. Where flying warriors would fight at high speed and whole worlds would crumble around them.

He blinked the nostalgic thoughts away, and looked to the other combatants. The red Hive soldiers were being slowly whittled down, only two of them remained. The forces he had sent against them were in worse shape though. Stomper was left with a fighter ant and two squirrels to back him up. With a huge effort of will and a flexing of his core, Benjamin repopulated the room with all the minions who had died during the battle.

They weren’t going to win this battle with a few ants, but a scythe wasted killing one of them, was a scythe not buried in Benjamin or his goblin’s heads. Ice was chasing the queen around the room. Leaping into the air and snapping her jaws at the Hive’s feet. While the queen attempted to impale her with her remaining scythed forelimb in return.

“Grace, I need you to help Ice.” Benjamin said, frothing blood bubbling from his lips as he spoke. One of his lungs must have been punctured.

“But Benjamin, you are injured and Grace’s bow is out of charge.” The goblin girl argued with him.

He knew she was worried about him, but she was the only one with ranged abilities who could hope to hurt the flying monarchs.

“Grace, I need you to do this. Give me your bow, I will recharge it for you.” he said insistently. There was less blood that time, he was healing.

With a curse he remembered he could boost his healing with channeled essence. He must be hurting to have forgotten that. When this was over, he would work on making that a priority for his partitioned off mind to do constantly. Like his eyes, and compressing his core. With great effort, he pushed essence into Grace’s bow, towards the creation core near the grip. Filling it completely before slumping back to the ground, where he focused on channeling his essence to his wounds.

“Who is Grace supposed to focus on?” she asked him in a rush as she let him fall in order to place an arrow to the string. She looked from the remaining soldiers, now being swamped by resummoned bodies, to the monarchs bouncing around the air.

“The queen,” he replied simply. She was the largest target, and she was the slower of the monarchs. Grace was good, but Benjamin didn’t think even she could hit the rapidly flying red king.

“Grace understands.” She said, raising the bow and pushing the stored essence into the arrows shaft.

The bow was truly impressive. Benjamin had wondered originally after leaving the Shipwright’s trial, what good swords and bows would do against the kinetic shields and blast guns. Now he knew an essence enhanced body had little to fear from regular bullets. Even a kinetically shielded person could be easily killed with a blade of grass, if enough essence was applied to it.

Grace timed her shot perfectly with Ice’s latest jump. The arrow smashing into the spiderweb of cracks that already covered her humanoid torso, and punching into the flesh inside. As the orange fluid began to seep out Benjamin wondered, not for the first time, why so many of the Erlking’s creations bled orange.

The thought fled as the queen’s wings stuttered and failed, sending her crashing to the ground. Ice was on her in a blink, rending and tearing into her now exposed insides. The Hive monarch wasn’t dead just yet, however. As Ice ripped into her, so did she, driving her scythed appendage into the she wolf, over and over.

They were both leaders of their respective peoples. Women who were used to being feared and fled from. Neither was used to being this badly mauled. The pain fueled their ferocity, and the pair fell into bloody chunks. Both having died without ever giving in to the other.

The remaining red monarch stopped his rapid flight, as his mate of years uncounted, was ripped apart. He screamed, high pitched and intense, his pain ripped from his chest in an explosion of sound. Grace’s last overcharged arrow caught the grieving monarch in his open mouth, blasting out the back of his skull. It impacted at nearly the same time as the blue king’s scythes.

The final red soldier fell to Stomper’s axe as the king was killed. Leaving Benjamin’s team victorious. Several things happened at the same time after that. The red monarch fell to the ground, followed closely by the descending form of the blue king. Grace dropped her bow and rushed to Benjamin’s side, wrapping her arms around him and searching for his wounds. Stomper spun his axe in a victory dance. While Benjamin…Benjamin looked at the now headless king, with a growing sense of horror.

Long seconds passed, where nobody did anything else. Each member of the party caught up in their own actions, be they joy, worry, exultation or horror. Eventually, Benjamin came back to himself and remembered the battle raging outside. Turning to the blue king he said

“Is their anything you can do to calm the red soldiers outside?” The blue king didn’t reply verbally, but his wings beat madly as he rose into the air and flew out the top of the tower.

Benjamin hoped he was going to quell the battle, and not to paint the ground with red bodies and orange blood. Whatever unfolded outside was beyond his control now however. He looked to Grace, who had been trying to undo his armor’s straps for some time and sobbing uncontrollably.

“Grace, I’m ok.” He told her, placing his hands over hers. “I heal really fast remember; this is nothing to me. In fac…”

His words were cut off as Grace’s lips met his, in a fear fueled, kiss of passion. Her blood-soaked hands had wound themselves around his head, and held him to her. Her hands were trembling, her whole body, shaking. Benjamin knew she was kissing him as much out of relief and anxiety as passion, much like she had kissed Stomper in the bathhouse.

Unlike that time with Stomper however, when she finally pulled her head back, her hands stayed twined around his neck. She looked into his eyes, as if to reassure herself that he was, in fact, still there. Then buried her face into his neck and wept.

Benjamin knew that time was pressing on, that they had to gather the spoils of this fight and move forward. He also knew that Grace had lost enough, and been forced to endure so much pain, because of times press. He could give her this time; he would hold her for the rest of the night if she needed it. If the universe didn’t like it, the whole place could burn for all he cared.